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Joseph Riccio, 78, has run 77 marathons. He will line up for his 78th Sunday in Burlington.

Riccio, who hopes to run the 26.2-mile race through Burlington when he’s 80, is the oldest runner registered in the KeyBank Vermont City Marathon. It will be his 23rd Burlington marathon.

“The only thing that’s changed is the hotel,” he said, of revolving occupancy at the (current) Hilton Burlington.

“I’ve stayed in the same room — 631 — for 23 years,” Riccio said. “I like the people in Burlington. The people are marvelous. ... I’ve done 78 marathons in various cities through the country. All of a sudden, the prices for food and everything are jacked up. Not Burlington.”

Riccio, of Branford, Conn., is a retired high school English teacher. Growing up in New Haven, Conn., he competed in team sports at a Catholic high school. He started to run when he got to Providence College.

“I had four good years,” Riccio said. “When I left I was still developing as a runner. ...

“To run is such a natural thing and you don’t have to have a skill to run. You just have to have a work ethic. I never considered myself to be gifted. I had to work at it to achieve any kind of success. But it’s rewarding. You feel good after a run. You feel great after a competition as well. Win or lose, you feel good.”

In college, Riccio ran about 80 miles a week. He graduated in 1955, before road racing was a standard and readily available sports activity.

Riccio put running aside and played in baseball and basketball leagues, recreational competition that included post-game beers and hanging out.

“Needless to say, I put on weight,” Riccio said. “I wasn’t even thinking about running till I got on the scale. I got on the scale cause I felt thick.”

Riccio weighed 137 pounds when he left college. By 1976, he weighed 198 pounds.

“With that, I went on a crash diet,” Riccio said. “I cut out shots and beers. I decided to go for a run. It was a one-mile run which I stopped four times on. I couldn’t do one mile without stopping four times. It took the wind out of my sails. I thought, If I’m going to do something here I’m going to have to work at it. I put my mind to it: I’m going to run.”

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Riccio has been running in earnest, to use his words, since he made that decision in 1976. He ran his first marathon eight years later, in 1984, in Rhode Island. It was not a great time for him, 3:50, because he got panicky at mile 23, Riccio said.

His personal best was in 1990, racing in the Burlington event. Riccio finished in 3:15, he said.

“You train as hard as you can and you see what happens on race day,” Riccio said. “I feel great after a marathon. My body, after all these years, my body could absorb the punishment. And yet I could go out the very next day for a short run. I’m checking the parts. And hey, everything’s fine.”

At 78, Riccio is almost back to his college weight: He weighs 148 pounds and runs 45 to 50 miles a week when he’s not training for a marathon. In training, the runs are longer and slower, he said.

The Burlington course has improved over the marathon’s 25-year run, Riccio said. In the early years, when race officials asked for course feedback, Rizzio was pleased to make suggestions.

There was a troublesome double-loop configuration, Riccio said, “like a corkscrew to get up to the Marketplace.”

Rizzio is set to stay in his usual Burlington hotel room, and eat a Saturday night meal, as always, at Trattoria Delia.

On race morning he’ll have a cup of coffee, half an English muffin and maybe a banana.

“I like to run on empty,” he said. Riccio is looking forward to running in the Vermont City Marathon at age 80, and beyond.

“Quite honestly,” Riccio said. “I think I could do it forever.”

Youngest runner, Danish exchange student

Katrine Jensen, 16, will run her first marathon next week in Burlington.

The trip to Burlington for the Vermont City Marathon will also be Jensen’s first trip to Vermont. And it will be one of her last big adventures in the United States.

Jensen, who will turn 17 in October, is the youngest runner in the full marathon, according to race officials. She is an exchange student from Denmark who has spent 10th grade living with a family in Woodward, Penn. She has never run track or cross country in school, either in this country or Denmark, Jensen said.

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In Denmark, Jensen plays soccer. In Pennsylvania, she competed in track and field but not in the running events: she threw the discus and shotput.

“I didn’t do any running because we had so much training (in field events) that it was too much for my legs to have to run in track, too,” Jensen said. This spring, she played soccer.

She started running with her friend, Marcy Smucker, who will run with Jensen in the Vermont City Marathon. Smucker’s parents are runners, and both have run the Burlington marathon.

“Marcy’s dad has run a lot of marathons and 100-milers and he told us that a good one to run would be Vermont,” Jensen said. “He started helping us to train for this marathon.”

The training recently built to a 20-mile run, Jensen said last week. Since then, she has been decreasing her distance in preparation for the marathon.

“It’s a pretty awesome feeling,” she said of running 20 miles. “When you’re done you’re just like on top of the world. I’m running with my best friend. We can talk and stuff, it just flies by.”

She ran 20 miles in 3 hours, 56 minutes. “You’re pretty tired,” Jensen said. “But when we hit 20, I felt like I could go 6.2 more.”

Jensen’s parents are coming to visit next month; she will return to Denmark with them. They’re proud of her endurance running, a rookie runner training for a marathon, she said.

Jensen and Smucker will run the race together, a culmination of an “awesome year” as an exchange student.

“We thought it would be pretty cool to run a marathon together,” Jensen said.